The Bus Network Redesign in Indianapolis Will Be Like Launching a Brand New Transit System

The vote to approve a transit funding ballot measure last November was a watershed moment for Indianapolis. After nearly a decade of intense advocacy, voters were finally given the opportunity to decide whether to pay for a vastly improved transit system. They jumped at the chance — 59 percent agreed to tax themselves to increase bus service and build bus rapid transit lines. The City Council approved the tax earlier this year.

Transit expansion in Indianapolis doesn’t look very much like transit expansion in denser cities, where new rail lines are the big-ticket items. Nevertheless, what Indianapolis is doing deserves attention, especially from other spread-out American cities looking to spend their transit dollars as efficiently as possible.

The big change in Indianapolis is a complete reshaping of its bus system. The result, as I’ll describe in this installment of Getting Transit Right, will be like setting up a brand new transit network.

Instead of operating a bus network that’s perceived “as just a social service,” said IndyGo’s Brian Luellen, the system redesign aimed to ensure more people had access to better bus service at more times.

The hoped-for result, said Mark Fisher of the Indy Chamber, is that “you no longer have to plan your day around transit.”

The new funding will pay to increase bus service by about 70 percent. The share of Indianapolis low-income households within a half-mile of a bus line that comes at least every 15 minutes will rise from 16 percent to 51 percent; the number of jobs near frequent transit routes will double; and all routes will operate seven days a week.

The most remarkable element of the plan, which is scheduled to be fully implemented by 2019, is the grid of frequent bus service in the city core. The current system relies on bus routes radiating from downtown that don’t come very often, much like transit networks in many American cities that prioritize peak-hour service connecting outer neighborhoods to the jobs in a central business district.

This radial structure limits the kind of trips people can make using transit. If you want to get from one neighborhood to another, for instance, you have to wait for a bus that comes infrequently, go downtown, then wait to transfer to another infrequent bus.

In Indianapolis, this is a problem even within downtown, where destinations are far enough away from one another that people can’t get where they’re going without transferring. The new frequent bus grid will solve these problems in a few ways.

For one, buses will come much more often on several routes, so when people do have to make a connection, they won’t have to wait long to catch the next bus. Currently, there are only three corridors where buses come at least every 15 minutes all day. The new bus grid will establish routes with at least 15-minute frequencies on a dozen corridors across the city, improving service to neighborhoods with higher population densities, particularly near downtown.

These network changes will also allow people to travel crosstown along several frequent east-west and north-south corridors. As such, riders will be able to get between neighborhoods much more easily — they won’t have to go out of their way and transfer downtown for those trips.

BRT as the spine of the system

Unlike most of the other cities investing in transit, Indianapolis is not proposing any new rail lines. While earlier plans had promoted rail lines crisscrossing downtown, the state legislature voted to prohibit anything other than bus service.

The proposed BRT network focuses first on the Red Line. The $98 million first phase of this route would run 13.5 miles north-south, connecting downtown with the Fountain Square and Broad Ripple commercial districts, a major medical center, the University of Indianapolis, and the state fairgrounds. The project is expected to begin construction this year and wrap up in 2019. It’s projected to carry 11,000 daily passengers — not bad for a city where total transit ridership currently numbers about 33,000 trips a day. It will be funded mostly by a federal Small Starts grant.

On the Red Line, passengers will pay fares before getting on the bus, speeding up boarding. Special vehicles with doors on both sides will enable stops at the curb or, on sections where buses run in center-aligned transit lanes, stations in the street. Service will be especially frequent.

About 60 percent of the corridor will be getting dedicated bus lanes, an essential element to bypass traffic congestion and ensure reliability. The bus lane design isn’t ideal, however.

In some sections along College Avenue north of downtown, the project calls for one-lane, reversible busways. This is a risky compromise, intended to avoid alterations to street parking. It will require buses to wait at stations until the vehicles moving in the opposite direction have passed, which could detract from reliability. On other parts of the line, the bus lane will be shared with turning vehicles, a feature that may also reduce bus speeds.

On the south side of the Red Line, there won’t be any dedicated lanes at all. IndyGo suggests that that’s because congestion isn’t a problem in those areas, but if that’s true, what harm is there in dedicating right of way to transit, particularly on the four-lane streets where the buses will run?

At Fountain Square, the absence of dedicated bus lanes may hamper the quality of service on the Red Line. Image: IndyGo

The second BRT corridor is the Purple Line, which will share some segments with the Red Line and serve the northeastern part of the city. It could be completed by 2020 if funding aligns as expected. Together, the two lines would be within reach of 90,000 residents and 150,000 jobs, a big portion of the region’s population.

Future efforts

Indianapolis has several other plans that are a bit further from realization. The Blue Line along Washington Street would serve one of the region’s most transit-dependent populations. Though the line would run on streets with five or more lanes in most places, it would have no dedicated bus lanes. That suggests the Blue Line won’t provide service up to the standards of the city’s other proposed BRT routes.

Other projects will require support from suburban counties to move forward. IndyGo hopes to extend the Red Line north to Carmel and south to Greenwood, providing access to key suburban destinations. And it plans to invest in a Green Line BRT north from downtown to Fishers and Noblesville, home to significant job concentrations. But those services remain to be funded.

Grading transit expansion in Indianapolis

Indianapolis’s transit plans offer big benefits at a low cost. With more bus service and a thoughtful redesign of the network, city residents will be able to take advantage of a much more reliable, frequent transit system. Ridership is certain to increase. While there are weaknesses in the design of new bus lanes, the city is setting a good precedent by dedicated street space to transit on the busiest routes, helping riders bypass car traffic and improving speed and reliability.

Strengths

With relatively little additional money, Indianapolis will dramatically improve the frequency and reliability of its bus network.

The city’s new bus network concentrates service in its most densely-populated neighborhoods, greatly increasing the number of people and jobs within reach of good transit service.

The proliferation of frequent bus lines in a grid pattern will enable people to make trips by transit that were inconceivable with the old, infrequent hub-and-spoke system.

A focus on BRT will provide appropriate service for a low-density city at a reasonable cost.

Weaknesses

While the new BRT lines are a big improvement over existing service, dedicated bus lanes should be beefed up in many locations to ensure fast, reliable service.

Because the counties outside Indianapolis have yet to raise new revenue, transit improvements that would reach major suburban job clusters are not yet funded.

14 thoughts on The Bus Network Redesign in Indianapolis Will Be Like Launching a Brand New Transit System

On single bus lanes, buses have a key advantage over single track rail as buses don’t have to use the dedicated lane if it isn’t available. Thus,

1) As peak-hour congestion is generally worse in one direction of a street, there seems to be diminishing gains for having bi-directional dedicated lanes.
2) Depending on the design of the street, buses and merge into or out of the dedicated lane either frequently, or at will, to allow passing.

Do existing roadway safety standards allow for efficient use of a single center dedicated lane? Are such lanes more susceptible to encroachment from cars?

The funny thing is I feel like they did do the hard political work by getting dedicated bus lanes on Meridan & College. This is a rats nest of NIMBYs and either adjacent to or the commuting territory for some of the wealthiest people in Indy. I just do not understand the lack of lanes on 38th or Washington. Unlike College or Meridian those streets are truly overbuilt and I would venture a guess that commuting patterns have changed enough to where they are no where near capacity.

This is a good article, but I think there needs to be some clarification on the Blue Line. Just because the AA from the MPO didn’t recommend bus lanes on the Blue Line doesn’t mean it won’t get them. The AA from the MPO on the Red Line called for BAT lanes, but IndyGo is doing dedicated lanes, some bi-directional, for more than half of the route. Blue Line project design hasn’t even begun, so it’s way too soon to say that it will or won’t have dedicated lanes.

The Red Line’s single reversible transit lane on College is arguably a necessary evil. There are well-organized resident and business opposition groups along that corridor that continue to scream bloody murder about the loss of ~10% of parking spaces in the current plan. If IndyGo had proposed fully eliminating one side of on-street parking to provide for two transit lanes, it very well could have brought down the whole project.

Further, the single reversible lane only extends about 3 miles. With 10 minute headways for the Red Line, the average trip along the College corridor will only experience 1 waiting period for a bus to pass. I think the reversible lane is a worthy compromise to ensure the plan succeeded.

There are a few things that need to be corrected in the article. The south end of the Red Line didn’t get dedicated lanes mostly due to ROW constraints (significant ROW acquisition would be required at stations). The Blue Line has not entered the project development stage. While the AA did not call for dedicated lanes, it doesn’t mean it won’t get them (the Red Line AA only called for BAT lanes on Meridian). It’s too soon to say if the Blue Line will or will not get dedicated lanes.

What I have seen throughout many “rapid” public bus systems is that many people decide to not pay for a bus ticket since it is not feasible to have the city continuously paying to have two bus officers on each bus (one checking tickets and one driving). On the other hand, If the driver enforces the ticket policy, he will therefor slow down the turnover rate of 10 minutes between each station. Also since this is the reality, many homeless people decide to “live” in the back of each one of these buses for the day since they can easily get away with it (which deters a significant amount of individuals to use the bus.) Also, the problem with a designated bus lane is that many drivers (mostly international or not local to Indy) tend to drive unknowingly in the bus lane (even when signs and gates specifically say not to) or follow the bus through the designated ‘bus gates’ scattered around. This causes great confusion, traffic and time wasted for many people associated. There is a way to implement a rapid bus system, but this current option is not the way.

They could have put the Red Line on Keystone north of 38th, much like the Twin Cities did with the METRO Green Line on University (instead of Grand or Selby or even Summit). But then again, the Twin Cities are building a TRANSIT system whereas Indianapolis is merely using transit as a tool to spur development in the largely abandoned inner city. The Red Line will fail because Indy officials are not being honest with themselves or their constituents about what this line really is. Then there’s the reality that Indy builds lots of things and maintains none of them. IF the Red Line fails (as it will), it will destroy transit in Indy until at least 2050 or beyond. Mark my words.

This line is terrible. Busses are an absolute joke in Indianapolis and have been since the 1920s when they pushed out a successful interurban. The reason there aren’t dedicated lanes on the south route is because those streets only have two lanes! A bus line is already strangling local businesses there. I hate this plan passionately. Trains wouldn’t add to traffic which these damn monstrosities will do .

Thanks for publishing! I’m really excited about this investment for Indy, and I’m pretty shocked to see it actually pass. Reliable and frequent public transit is the best invigoration for a city. Hoping to push for BRT lanes on the blue line since they’re still in planning about it.

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